A Mother's Love

I always felt love from my mother.  She was my security.  I have a clear memory of her in a yellow one-piece dress, with starched pleats.  I remember her ironing in it.  I remember her wearing it to bring cupcakes to my birthday in Nursery School at King Street Baptist Church in Cocoa.

A lot went on that I had no idea about.  I was kept safe from things that happened.  Until I was in my 20s, I never knew about her post-partum depression when my sister was born. 

Someone was always around when she went to stay at a hospital when I was small.  Her mother's death got the better of her, but I never knew what happened.  My father's mother came to live with us then, when we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Hollywood.  My father had transferred offices of The Miami Herald. 

She came back when we moved into the house at 7240 Tropicana Street in Miramar.  For a while, a "colored woman" named Ruby kept house.  Ruby was ancient and chewed tobacco.  She had worked for my grandfather.  She took the bus from Tampa to be with us.  I think grandaddy must have paid her to take care of us.  She shared my room but I do not remember much more.

Over the years, my mother went back to volunteer nursing and taking refresher courses.

In 1972, on our way to get my sister from Pembroke Pines Middle School, we were hit by a gravel truck and both nearly died. 

My life is a blur, pretty much.  I only remember a few things and the thing I most remember is that my parents loved me.  I was safe with them.  They were refuge from all that frightened me in the world.  They had all the answers.

Life continued.  I went to high school, but in the middle of my freshman year, my father had the chance to return here, to the place that we call home.

I finished high school, grateful to be away from the cruelty of my peers among new kids who weren't quite sure what to make of the likes of me... scarred, unfashionable, naive, but the granddaughter of someone prestigious.

I started college and in my first year, my mother, who had suffered small strokes for years, had another one only days after my parents' anniversary on April 1st.  They called themselves "April Fools."

This was a major stroke.  I wasn't allowed to come home until school ended.  I got off the plane and was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale to see her.  My father went every night.

She came home and I spent the summer helping her with the assistance of aides who came and went. We took her to therapy.  Dad's friends built a ramp and a porch onto the house.

I went back to school... uninterested in study but not allowed to leave. 

My depression did not begin there but I was discovering much about myself and feeling the most acute pain in my heart that I have ever known.

I finished four years of college and came home to stay for eight more. 

My mother lost the use of her right arm and right leg.  Aphasiac, she managed to communicate as best she could though it was often hard to decipher what she wanted.  She somehow managed to smile and to convey love and laughter through it all.  Smiling at me was her last conscious act.

I have never had children and I do not know how a mother feels but I can feel the ferocity of a mother's love around me.  My friends, relatives and lovers seem to be in love with their children and their grandchildren as well.

I know that I am always second or third or even farther on down the line in the scheme of things when I date a mommy.

I know single women who sleep with their sons.  Sons approaching their teens.  Sons approaching their 20s.  Sometimes it is for lack of enough beds.  Sometimes its just... something I have a hard time understanding.

I miss my mother's love. No one will ever love me more.  That is how I know something about what someone who had to choose her life over being with her children feels.

I hope someday to share some intense fraction of the love I've known, and to have something of it returned in kind.

Inspired by: http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1580

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